Former Renault team boss Frederic Vasseur has revealed the reason behind his decision to quit Renault.

The fact that the brief statement announcing Frederic Vasseur's departure from the Renault F1 Team didn't include a single quote from any one involved or even the almost obligatory 'thanks and good luck with the rest of your life' message, indicated that all was not well with the move that sees Jerome Stoll and Cyril Abiteboul running things.

While no-one expected Renault's first season on its return to the sport as a constructor to be easy, the French manufacturer clearly didn't expect things to be as tough as they were, especially at a time it was trying to sort out its shortcomings on the engine front also.

Indeed, it was only once Renault took control that the French company realised how bad things had got under its former owners; a serious lack of core staff, outdated equipment, the Enstone facility run down and needing a major update.

At the same time, behind the scenes, the team was suffering from that most common of ailments in F1, failure to agree, as the various parties charged with rebuilding the team differed in their ways of dealing with the situation.

"There was too much different vision in the management of the team," Vasseur told Motorsport.com, "so at this stage I think it makes sense for me to leave.

"For the Renault team also," he continued, "if you want to perform in F1, you need to have one leader in the team and one single way. If you have two different visions then the result is that the work inside the team is slow."

While his departure appeared to catch everyone on the hop, the Frenchman says he first raised his fears after the season finale.

"We had a discussion straight after Abu Dhabi at the end of last season, and we tried to find the best compromise and the best organisation for 2017. I took one or two weeks off and I made my decision in the first week of January. It is much better to stop right now."

Vasseur, who was new to F1 when he joined Renault having spent ten highly successful years with ART GP where he worked with the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel, Nico Rosberg, Jules Bianchi and Valtteri Bottas as they won their various titles with the French outfit, admits he is sad to be leaving Enstone.

"It is a small frustration, but I have a positive feeling that we did all together a good job on some points: in terms of recruitment, in terms of restructuring the company and also in track operations.

"We improved a lot over the past season," he insists, "and some strong engineers will join the team over the next few weeks and months. So there were some positive aspects.

"The collaboration with the thousand people who work for the team was a wonderful experience for me, because it is a real racing team and I appreciate a lot the collaboration with the guys. But the frustration is like if you are building the foundations of a house and you stop after the first metre… but that is fine. I've made my decision".

Despite it all, Vasseur believes the team, which has recruited Nico Hulkenberg to partner Jolyon Palmer, could challenge for a top five position in the standings this season.

"The target is to be in the top five," he said. "I think that is realistic because the foundations are strong now. We have new guys joining the team with good experience and it will be the first car designed for the Renault power unit. The engine is also doing a good improvement. Everything is on the way.

"But now it is difficult to know where we are, and where the others will be. We will see in Barcelona and it will be difficult before to have a clear view on the situation before then. But the target is to be in the top five."